Like anyone out there keeping a blinking eye on the Fibre To The Home proceedings in Tasmania. I cannot see a better state to do the initial rollout. They have been rorted far too long by Telstra of the past and the links etc back to mainland, and their Premier had the balls to put out the only state tender. Good on him.

I voted Liberal last election, and in hindsight i reckon it was the NBN that got Labour's ticket in to be honest. Live in the past all you like: broadband is now a utility, just like electricity, and running water.

I feel that Labour will be re-elected purely on the notion that the Liberals have not yet stated what they would do with the NBN if they were elected. They'd probably scrap the whole thing -- and that alone would empower the looney 'toons like Conroy to, one hand feed us the FTTH goodness; and on the other, control how we use it. Why? We don't know why, as he isn't a fan of full disclosure on many of his decisions. Just trust him, he's a bit of a Labour leftist. :|

Anyways, the Tas NBN chapter is looking at connecting clients up in July this year, with iiNet, Internode et al making their presence felt; although iiNet's pricing is a bit premature and apparently does not reflect the wholesale charges.

Linky: here.
And just to reaffirm the Labour lefty view point (second last paragraph): here.

I bought a A-RAM 128GB PRO Solid State Drive from here. Reinstalled the OS, and for the most part, Windows was sitting at the welcome screen for a good 30 seconds. Which, i thought was extremely odd considering Windows 'Performance Information and Tools' were blazing, and my drive diagnostics with the 'AS SSD Benchmark' tool were as expected and quite exceptional.

After some googling i did not find a conclusive answer. So i did the obvious and reinstalled the OS, and slowly added all the drivers until i hit the bottleneck with no luck.

Suffice it to say, another google a few minutes ago, revealed the real culript - it was due to the fact of setting the Windows 7 desktop background to a solid colour. Yes, something as stupid as this caused it!

Here is the original article:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/b9e09e89-678a-406c-9f7e-ac2d8919b92e

And the Miocrosoft knowledge base link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977346

Back to business for now..

Had a (mis)client recently that wanted the web design /dev world for the price of a happy meal..

• indecisive on what the content outcome should be
• asked me to remove royalty proof watermarks on a few images that they did not own
• cramming as much as crap as possible in the $1.95 package AFTER the quote was given
• substantially overdue hosting related account that was not paid eventually
• priority service - stop everything, we want it now, type of crap
• premium search engine optimisations requested - they wanted to be first spot on a national scale, haha; i guess the freely provided local first rank wasn't enough!
• the need to send me an email as to why they were leaving and how a business should operate - yeah right, take advice from a dodgy outfit
• and the clincher? one ring phone pranks on my mobile repeatedly, so that i would call them back at my expense

Apparently i am the Mr Fix It at home..

The front door intercom hadn't been working for a while and i couldn't source the parts as a result of the system being superseeded. I pulled it apart and found that the button solder points on the cirtcuit board pcb had broken, got my solder out and fixed it.

Lawn mower wouldn't start as a result of the busted spark plug / rubber combination. I got a a new spark plug and rubber, and a wrench and got it all functional and finished the lawn with in the afternoon. I could have used this situation as a valid excuse, though - did i mention how much i loathe mowing the lawn?

Completely pulled the wii apart and removed a chip and put it all back together; no screws were left over, so i gather it was all done right, haha. Looking into pimping it up with a DX transparent pink housing to replace the default white wii housing.

Pulled the vertical drapes apart and replaced the cord to retract / expand the drapes -- man the reassembly was confusing at first, but at the end it only cost me $3.50 to do. :-)

Here's how it roughly goes:

we are based in India and have looked at your site, blah blah team of 50 dedicated professionals to SEO optimise your website and boost your search engine status.

Email source a gmail account with a reply address that may be the same or another one but most definitely not a legit company tld.

Please reply so we can add you to the spam list.

I sent my wireless headset back to suppliers end of last year. They arrived two weeks late, and the parcel was extremely damaged, and sent back to me as a result. Was dealing with Aust POST regarding the damage in transit and am finally getting some form of resolution -- hopefully last hurdle should be posted today to sort this out.

My HSV Holden commodore has been neglected over the years and i have been slowly fixing it. Still got a lot to do but it is definitely a work in progress.

Wireless mic for the wii turned up a few days ago as DOA. What irked me was the fact that the ebay listed item location was Australia (which is why i bought it) but the item was sent from China. I had to return the yum cha back to them in China and it cost me fricken $14.50. Great.

Been scouring for full time work over the past few months since we got back from Europe -- applied for some and should hopefully hear something before the end of January; otherwise i am going back to Tafe.

On a positive note - we painted the girls room pink, bought them new beds and matresses, and cute quilts and covers. Just have to wait a few more weeks for the paint to aerate before we put up the new BrightStarKids wall decorations.

We also reupholstered the dinner chairs with a material that was kid spill friendly.